Columbia Business School Names New Assistant Dean of Admissions amid Declining Application Volume

Columbia Business School (CBS) this week announced that it has appointed Amanda Carlson to serve as the school’s assistant dean of admissions. Carlson will oversee the admissions department of the MBA and Executive MBA programs. She replaces former assistant dean of admissions Mary Miller, who now directs EMBA-Global Asia, a joint program offered by the University of Hong Kong, London Business School and CBS.

Carlson has been at CBS since 2002, most recently in the role of director of admissions. Before joining CBS, she worked in campus recruiting for McKinsey & Company. She also has served on the board of the Forte Foundation and as a member of the Graduate Management Admissions Council’s (GMAC) annual conference advisory committee.

“Mary’s many contributions to the school and to the recruitment of our highly qualified student body have been impressive, and she will be missed,” Dean Glenn Hubbard said in a statement.

Carlson’s appointment comes just days after a Bloomberg BusinessWeek article reported that CBS experienced a 19 percent drop in applications last year, the greatest one-year drop in recent memory. According to Amir Ziv, CBS vice dean and accounting professor, troubles on Wall Street are to blame for the precipitous plummet in the number of candidates applying.

“There’s merit to the argument that if the financial industry isn’t doing well, it should hit schools that are more exposed to it than others,” Ziv told Bloomberg BW. CBS sent more than half of its 2012 grads to jobs in the financial services. “In the long run, if it’s not doing well, you’ll have fewer students interested in schools that are excellent in finance,” Ziv added.

New York University’s Stern School of Business, which also sends almost half of its graduates into jobs in finance, saw applications fall by 12 percent, Bloomberg BW reports.